The present invention is generally related to handling systems for disabled persons sitting on wheelchairs. More particularly, the invention is directed to a mobile device designed to enable transportation of the disabled person towards an access site, for instance the inlet door of a vehicle, and then his or her transfer to and through said access site, and vice-versa. In the case of a vehicle, for example a railway vehicle, the access site is namely consisting of a door opening arranged at a higher level than the railway station platform. Similar conditions are to be founded even in the case of wheel vehicles and of architectural sites wherein only steps and not shute ramps are provided get over even low level differences.
In all these cases autonomous access of the disabled person on his wheelchair is prevented, and resorting to elevator systems with the aid of assisting personnel is necessarily required.
Such an elevator system, expressly provided for boarding and unboarding a wheelchair relative to the body of a railway vehicle, is disclosed and illustrated in German Patent Application DE-A-4128076. This system consists of a manually displaceable trolley carrying a horizontal platform designed to bear the wheelchair, and lifting means to vertically displace the platform up to the level of the railway body access door.
This known device would seem to provide a limited functional efficiency, particularly owing to the fact that correct aligning of the platform with the narrow door opening of a railway vehicle, so as to enable carrying out the wheelchair boarding and unboarding, requires relatively long operations by the disabled person""s assistant, which evidently involves uncomfortableness for the disabled person himself or herself. Due to this reason such a known device does not appear having ever been reduced into practice.
The object of the present invention is to overcome the above drawbacks, and to provide a mobile device for disabled persons of the type set forth in the above, which is effectively suitable for effective employ in all the above disclosed situations, and having nevertheless a relatively simple and economical construction.
According to the invention, this object is achieved essentially by virtue of the fact that the trolley is motor-driven and is provided with an aligning system to line-up the platform relative to an access site for the wheelchair.
This aligning system conveniently comprises optical detector means carried by the platform and arranged to co-operate with optical locator means to be associated to said access site.
According to a further feature of the invention the platform may be displaceable not only vertically but also horizontally in a transverse direction with respect to the trolley, and may additionally include a transfer ramp longitudinally displaceable between a retracted position and an extended position for transferring the wheelchair from the platform to the access site and vice-versa.
The trolley of the mobile device according to the invention can be motor-driven not only as far as advancement thereof is concerned, but even in connection with lifting and/or transverse displacement of the platform and/or longitudinal displacement of the transfer ramp. In this case the aligning system may conveniently comprise an electronic control unit connected to said optical detector means and to motor-actuators of the trolley to perform positioning, automically and according to a guided aligning cycle, said platform with the related transfer ramp into precise correspondence with the access site for the wheelchair.
Accordingly the assisting operator shall simply have to drive the trolley until approximatively locate it in front of the access site, and then starting the automatic aligning cycle simply checking that this cycle is correctly completed until transfer of the wheelchair from the platform to the access site, or vice-versa.